Ballmer Glad That Yahoo! Deal Didn’t Workout

Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer has claimed that his company was ‘lucky' it did not buy out Yahoo for $44 billion back in 2008.

The comments, which were made during the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, the same week as the struggling internet company announced another disappointing end quarter results.

Ballmer, known for his to-the-face comments, claimed that Microsoft was lucky it did not buy Yahoo, which was looking for a buyer at the moment. Yahoo and Microsoft share a 10 year long search agreement in which Yahoo's internet searches are powered by Bing.

"Hallelujah...You know times change...sometimes you're lucky. Any chief executive who wanted to buy anything before the market collapsed in 2008 would be glad he didn't buy it," Ballmer said.

"Putting everything else aside - the market really kind of fell apart [in 2008 when Microsoft made the unsolicited bid]. And you know if you think about the timing of it, if Yahoo! had accepted our bid...then we would have closed post Lehman Brothers," he added reports PCWorld.

In early 2008, Microsoft had made a $33 per share, or $44 billion offer to purchase Yahoo, which was rejected by then Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.